Bloody Mary Candyman

Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that illiterately literal interpretations of the Bible are one of my pet peeves.

Especially when these readings involve interpreting a passage without any regard for context.

Especially when those promoting these clumsily crypto-literal interpretations maintain a proud and determined ignorance of how the passage in question has been interpreted by others, living and dead, for two thousand years.

Especially when those promoting such readings seem to think that the word "God" refers to some kind of lesser djinni who responds with the granting of wishes or the dispensing of vengeance depending on which magic words we incant.

And most especially when those ahistoric, illiterate, countertextual, anti-intellectual readings are used to market a product or to support the kind of dishonest, hard-sell proselytization that amounts to the same thing as marketing a product.

That's one reason why I don't like Tim LaHaye. It's also why I don't like the "Blasphemy Challenge."

I do not believe that saying "Bloody Mary" or "Candyman" three times while looking into a mirror will result in my imminent death. Despite what both LaHaye and the promoters of the Blasphemy Challenge seem to think, this does not make me an atheist.

hapax: By continuously shifting the terminology, you have already pre-supposed the conclusion. Can you understand how this might just possibly irritate the people you are conversing with? Yes: I see theists demanding the right to do this on this very thread. I hadn’t realized that you understood how irritating this is.

Rosina

“If we take a person who is actually hearing voices in his head, and examine his neurochemistry, how likely is it that there’s something wrong with him ?” This is a question, and it would be interesting to know the answer. Of course, it might be difficult to ensure that the subject of this investigation was randomly chosen from all those who “hear voices” – not limited to those who have sought medical help. But it is a question that could be tested. I am assuming that if you investigated a truly representative sample you would eventually end up with data instead of self-selecting anecdotes. Of course, it really ought to be extended to see if people who do not claim ‘to hear voices’ show similar neurochemical signs – and if so, whether this means that the sample who hear voices are just as normal as those who don’t. You might need to redefine “something wrong with them”. Then Bugmaster continues: “I would argue that the probability of this is very high.” Notice that he/she does not give evidence – the Bugmaster ‘argues’ that the probability would be high without producing any evidence to show that there is actually scientific evidence that ‘hearing voices’ is almost always accompanied by neurochemical inbalance (or whatever the definition of ‘wrong’ is in this context). So having made the step from ‘hearing voices’ to ‘something wrong’ the Bugmaster can now say: “However, before our recent advances in medicine, people did not know this,” But from this argument, it seems that they don’t ‘know’ it yet, because the Bugmaster is only arguing that it might be so “because the very concept of neurochemistry did not exist. People who heard voices were thought to be possessed by gods, or demons, and were treated accordingly (epileptics fell into the same category, BTW). Do you think that the ancients were right, and that our modern neurobiologists are wrong ?” Some people who ‘hear voices’ do so because they are mentally ill – and this can be shown scientifically. They are probably examined medically because of a host of symptoms, not just ‘hearing voices’, and because their behaviour attracts adverse attention. Someone who says God demanded that he dig up all the flowers in the park might attract such an investigation: someone who believes God tells him to open a hostel for homeless people next to the park is not likely to rushed into a hospital for neurochemical analysis. So if only some persons who ‘hear voices’ are examined in this way, selected because they are otherwise showing signs of illness or anti-social behaviour, then we cannot assume that neurochemical inbalance is invariably associated with ‘hearing voices’. I think that this is the undistributed middle. a) people who can be shown scientifically to suffer from a mental illness hear voices b) St Ungulant hears voices c) Therefore St Ungulant is mentally ill is not a clinching logical argument.

Simon St.Laurent

Hapax: But it’s okay for you to say that it is morally suspect and intellectually indefensible to say that there IS a God? May I make a suggestion? It’s one I should have followed myself the past few days, and one I’ll endeavor to follow going forward: Don’t feed the trolls. If you actively defend your position, or worse, challenge theirs, you’ll get indignant complaints that you dare write in a language they find inappropriate, about experience that’s just so disturbing to the good rational scientific people of the world. Or something like that. Instead, this fragment of the Sermon on the Mount might well be practical advice: if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. (Matthew 5:39-41) I doubt that was written with blog comments about theism in mind, but it might be a path forward here. It certainly doesn’t mean you have to agree with the trolls, but it might provide more peace and even better conversation. I’m going to try it, anyway.

Bugmaster

Ok, firstly, I argue that the vast majority of the voice-hearing people whom we have studied have suffered from schizophrenia (or some other similar disorder); this is how schizophrenia was discovered, so it seems like a good assumption. Keep in mind that I am talking about bona-fide aural manifestations here, not a vague feeling of goodness or whatever. Rosina argues that our sample is biased: we have only studied people who have heard “bad” voices, that tell them to do harmful or incoherent things. There are lots of people who hear “good” voices, which do in fact come from God, but we have no idea of who they are or how many there are of them. Firstly, this statement relies on an implicit assumption that a). the Christian God exists, and that b). he would only send voices that tell people to do good things, and would never send voices that tell people to do bad things. There are lots of deeply devoted, religious people who disagree with (a), such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans of all sorts, Hindus, etc. As I’ve shown before, these religions are vastly different from each other, and thus they all disagree about which god or gods actually exist. (b) is debatable, depending on religion. Certainly, a fundamentalist Muslim interprets the voices that tell him to kill people as being good, but I think most of us would disagree. Pagans aren’t really into taking their voices too seriously — they have too many gods for that. Buddhists don’t believe in any voices at all, as far as I can tell. Hare Krishnas believe that the entire Universe, including humans, is sort of a big voice, and it wouldn’t talk to itself. Deists believe that God doesn’t send any voices just on principle. Animists (and I think Shintoists as well) believe that when a god wants to talk to us, he incarnates physically, usually as an animal — none of this wussy inner voice stuff. Keep in mind that these people are not godless atheists — they are as devout as you are, they just happen to believe in a different God (or gods). I know what you’re going to say — “but my God is real, and all the other ones are not !” — but keep in mind that everyone else says this, too. Secondly, since you are proposing the existence of a whole segment of the population that hears voices but is unknown to us, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it. You have made an empirically verifiable statement that is objectively falsifiable, and thus Mr. Occam would like to have a few words with you.

Jesurgislac

Hapax: This is *exactly* the kind of subtle suppression of discussion that I was talking about. You have tacitly equated “all fruitful lines of enquiry” with “scientific discussion…looking for a physical cause.” Well, yes. Not all lines of enquiry: but all fruitful lines of enquiry, as in lines of enquiry that will bear a result. By definition, if the answer is “God did it!” that is the end result. Rosina: Someone who says God demanded that he dig up all the flowers in the park might attract such an investigation: someone who believes God tells him to open a hostel for homeless people next to the park is not likely to be rushed into a hospital for neurochemical analysis. Depends. Someone who decides to open a hostel for homeless people, and goes about it in a rational and sensible way – figures out where the hostel is most needed, applies for funding, does fundraising, hires staff, gets licensed, etc – that person is not going to be rushed into hospital for neurochemical analysis even if, at every interview when the person is asked “Why did you decide to have a hostel for the homeless just there?” the person says, not “I saw homeless people tend to congregate in the park and I wanted to do something useful for them” but “God told me I should open a hostel there”. Because it will be obvious that this person may be mad nor’nor’west, but in all other quarters, they can tell a hawk from a handsaw. And most people will (I think*) take “God told me” for a theist justification of what might as well have been an atheistic decision. But, someone who declares there must be a hostel for the homeless next to the park and goes about setting one up by drawing chalk lines on the sidewalk outside the park and saying that God told them there would be a hostel there, well, they are likely to be rushed to hospital… *I think. They certainly would in this part of the world. Someone who repeatedly insisted that yes, they had heard a distinct voice saying “Open a hostel!” and giving them guidance about it would definitely be assumed to be neurologically imbalanced in that area, though I for one wouldn’t worry about it if they were obviously rational in all other areas. Rosina: Of course, it might be difficult to ensure that the subject of this investigation was randomly chosen from all those who “hear voices” – not limited to those who have sought medical help. But it is a question that could be tested. I am assuming that if you investigated a truly representative sample you would eventually end up with data instead of self-selecting anecdotes. Of course, it really ought to be extended to see if people who do not claim ‘to hear voices’ show similar neurochemical signs – and if so, whether this means that the sample who hear voices are just as normal as those who don’t. This would be an excellent notion – a truly fruitful line of enquiry. Scientific investigation, looking for a physical cause. :-D

Angelika

Bugmaster If we take a person who is actually hearing voices in his head, and examine his neurochemistry, how likely is it that there’s something wrong with him ? Apparently, there are many people who relatively frequently hear voices in their heads and they are even more who do so in rare occasions. I’d consider the experience of hallocinations in general a phenomenon, which is to some degree inbuild into the human brain and completely normal and certainly not ‘wrong’. – We should be very careful to lable any kind of natural occurances as ‘wrong’, just because that at the present state of our understanding of the world it is not obvious why they exist and what they might be good for. Of course, extreme forms of it like people constantaneously halluzinating would be considered unbalanced or diseased. In the same way, every normal person experiences to some degree of mood changes, however only in extreme cases we lable the phenomenon as bipolar disorder. Do you think that the ancients were right, and that our modern neurobiologists are wrong ? Actually, I think the ancients and the modern neurobiologists had/have both a considerable graps of the truth and were/are both to some degree mistaken. In our times, we are often a bit too quick to reject everything that does not fit in the very limited borders of our own rationality. We tend to break things down to examine the pieces and while doing so, very often forget that the whole thing is more than the sum of its pieces. And then we suddenly need cures to keep the isolated pieces functioning, which wouldn’t be necessary at all, if we would understand and leave them in their natural context. (Modern agriculture is a good example for this.) The ancients on the other hand often fell from the other side of the horse, disregarding rational thought too much and sometimes accepting things as parts of the whole, we now can safely say didn’t exist at all.

Rosina

The Bugmaster wrote: “Ok, firstly, I argue that the vast majority of the voice-hearing people whom we have studied have suffered from schizophrenia (or some other similar disorder); this is how schizophrenia was discovered, so it seems like a good assumption. Keep in mind that I am talking about bona-fide aural manifestations here, not a vague feeling of goodness or whatever. And continued, paraphrasing something I wrote: “Rosina argues that our sample is biased: we have only studied people who have heard “bad” voices, that tell them to do harmful or incoherent things. There are lots of people who hear “good” voices, which do in fact come from God, but we have no idea of who they are or how many there are of them.” I argued that the sample (if sample there was) was biased because a) it probably only looked at people whose behaviour was disordered in some other way, as well as claiming to hear voices, and b) it didn’t compare them with a control sample of non-voice hearing types. “I think the actual words the Bugmaster is paraphrasing were: “Some people who ‘hear voices’ do so because they are mentally ill – and this can be shown scientifically. They are probably examined medically because of a host of symptoms, not just ‘hearing voices’, and because their behaviour attracts adverse attention. Someone who says God demanded that he dig up all the flowers in the park might attract such an investigation: someone who believes God tells him to open a hostel for homeless people next to the park is not likely to rushed into a hospital for neurochemical analysis. “So if only some persons who ‘hear voices’ are examined in this way, selected because they are otherwise showing signs of illness or anti-social behaviour, then we cannot assume that neurochemical inbalance is invariably associated with ‘hearing voices’. I think that this is the undistributed middle.” He paraphrases this to say: “There are lots of people who hear “good” voices, which do in fact come from God, but we have no idea of who they are or how many there are of them.” But I made no suggestion that the ‘good’ voices do come from God, none whatsoever, and even less that this is a Christian God, his next interpolation: “Firstly, this statement relies on an implicit assumption that a). the Christian God exists, and that b). he would only send voices that tell people to do good things, and would never send voices that tell people to do bad things. There are lots of deeply devoted, religious people who disagree with (a), such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans of all sorts, Hindus, etc.” All I said was that if someone wants to say that ‘the majority of people who hear voices are suffering from a chemical inbalance’ then they should examine a much broader sample, including those who don’t hear voices, those whose voices are just a breath of inspiration etc. I wrote nothing that implies that God actually does speak to people, or that God exists, or that such a God, if he existed, would be an exclusively Christian God, or would only speak to Christians, or that He would only say nice things, if He did exist and speak. Nor can it be inferred that I must have been speaking about Christians because if He did speak to non-Christians He wouldn’t suggest building a hostel, because hostels are so exclusively Christian that no member of any other religion would be inspired to build one… Jesurgislac’s comments actually support my argument – someone whose ‘voices’ tell them to do something that can be supported by rational, charitable argument is going to stress those reasons, for fear of the men in white coats searching for chemical inbalance. Although they might stretch it to say that their God ‘inspired’ them, or that their religion encourages good works. Insisting that God told you to do something does strike me as odd, whether it’s dig up flowers or invade another country. But if what you do is ‘sensible’, and you don’t go on about God, then no-one is ever likely to find out whether you are just as odd as those who do something society considers weird or dangerous. And I think that a full scientific experiment would be interesting, even if it proved nothing to those whose views are already set.

Bugmaster

All I said was that if someone wants to say that ‘the majority of people who hear voices are suffering from a chemical inbalance’ then they should examine a much broader sample, including those who don’t hear voices… There’s a lot of data collected on normal, non-voice-hearing people by now. That’s how we are able to compare their MRIs to schizophrenics and people with other mental disorders. …those whose voices are just a breath of inspiration etc. So, again, you are proposing that a sizable segment of the population hears voices, but we don’t know about it. Since you are proposing the existence of this subgroup which has hitherto evaded all detection, it is up to you to provide evidence for its existence. Until you do, I am not justified in believing that this group most probably exists. If you are not proposing that “good” voices come from the Christian God, then my point about comparative religion is moot, but my point about comparative goodness still stands. Some people would consider certain behaviors “good”, while we find these same behaviors insane or abhorrent. Blowing up coffee houses or killing abortion doctors are obvious examples, though they do happen to be religious ones.

Jesurgislac

Rosina: – someone whose ‘voices’ tell them to do something that can be supported by rational, charitable argument is going to stress those reasons, for fear of the men in white coats searching for chemical inbalance. Also, in practical terms, if you’re looking for funding, you say to the funders whatever will be most likely to get them to give you the money. To most funding organizations, saying “God told me there should be a hostel there!” will make it far less likely that they’ll fund you even if they are themselves religious and believe that God speaks to people – than if you say “I think a hostel should be there because [give atheistic, rational reasons]”. Of course, if you had absolute faith that it was God speaking to you, you could go ahead and tell the funders that God spoke to you, in full confidence that God would speak to the funders too and tell them “Yes, there should be a hostel there, and it should be funded by you. About 100 000 shekels will do.” Anyone prepared to cop to this kind of absolute faith?

Rosina

The Bugmaster: “So, again, you are proposing that a sizable segment of the population hears voices, but we don’t know about it. Since you are proposing the existence of this subgroup which has hitherto evaded all detection, it is up to you to provide evidence for its existence. Until you do, I am not justified in believing that this group most probably exists.” I don’t think we are talking about people who have ‘evaded all detection’, but about people whose neurochemistry has not been investigated despite their statements that their God has spoken to them. I don’t think I have to prove their existence as a sizeable segment until such time as I get official funding for a research project, but I have read comments on this site itself about and by those who have had that type of experience, so I don’t think that they are a non-existent grouping. Maybe even the lure of a research project would not be a strong enough inducement to get the un-investigated voice-hearers to come forward, but I might word it rather more politely than ‘I’m looking for people with symptoms of schizophrenia.’ The size of the sample is of course one of the things to be identified, along with the various ways in which the ‘voices’ are heard. Bugmaster again: “If you are not proposing that “good” voices come from the Christian God, then my point about comparative religion is moot, but my point about comparative goodness still stands. Some people would consider certain behaviors “good”, while we find these same behaviors insane or abhorrent. Blowing up coffee houses or killing abortion doctors are obvious examples, though they do happen to be religious ones.” My ‘research project’ would involve four cohorts – those who hear voices from ‘God’, those who hear other voices (carrots, aliens, the girl on the TV test card), religious types of all faiths who do not hear voices, and atheists who do not hear voices. Within each cohort I would like to find a) people who are ‘inspired’ to do something which is universally recognized as ‘good’ – being excellent to each other in some way – I don’t imagine it would difficult to meet this from all four cohorts, though the definition of ‘inspired’ must be seen as being religiously neutral (except where the inspiration is religious); b) people who are inspired to act in a way that their faith requires (or the faith of which their voice is God, if that is not the same), but which is not generally seen as excellent, by those not adherent to their religion. This might range from building a place of worship at the site of the ‘hallucination’, or joining a crusade, or even, as you want to ensure that it is covered, blowing up coffee houses, where that is a tenet of the faith of the person concerned. I am not sure if ‘killing abortion doctors’ is actually a religious requirement of anyone’s religion – if so, then it qualifies: if not I move it to Block d, possibly along with the coffee shop bombers. Now I think this block can be filled easily by the ‘God’s voice’ cohort, and the normally religious – I have seen little evidence that suicide bombers, or the 9/11 terrorists were ‘suffering from auditory hallucinations’ or ‘hearing the voice of God’. The voices they did hear were here on earth and formed from flesh, and for many if not all, I’d put them in the ‘religious’ rather than the ‘hearer’ cohort. I am having difficulty in thinking of a similar ‘faith/culture/belief’ activity for atheists, and those guided by the voice of a carrot might also not engage in specific religious activities as a result of the carrot’s advice. c) The subject acts in a way that seems irrational but is not harmful – decides to walk from Lands End to John O’Groats in the nude, believes that God or the Greys want him to wear a hat lined with tin-foil, or has decided create an embroidery showing Adam and all the animals, including dinosaurs, at the time of Creation, with a date stamp visible, or collects porcelain and crystal pink unicorns. This too is easily filled by all four cohorts – with or without voices, with or without faith, people can be eccentric. Finally: d) These are the bad ones – the ones who have killed at the behest of their ‘voices’, or done other things which are universally accepted as ‘bad’, in the same way as we started off with ‘universal good’. If a faith rejects the ‘faith-based’ terrorism then this should be the Block for the suicide bomber, whether he heard what he thought was the voice of God or the voice of a radical imam. The mother who kills her infants because God wanted them for angels, those who professed religion leading the lynchings in the Southern United States, those who just like doing evil deeds, the honour killings of young daughters, and an utter raft of crimes that have no linkage with faith or ‘voices’. What would be interesting would be how many ‘heard voices’ advocating beatings, burnings and hangings, and how many just enjoyed it. But behaving atrociously to each other is possibly spread across the sectarian gap just as behaving excellently was. So would I expect any interesting results? I would of course expect that those in the faith/atheist groups were less likely to show neurological changes than those who professed to hearing voices. But what would be ‘interesting’ would be if there was a statistically significant difference between the results of the tests on those who ‘did good’ compared with those who ‘did evil’, particularly among the voice-hearers. That might indicate that ‘doing good’ protects you from some of the worse damage, that at lower levels of damage, humanity can control and direct ‘auditory hallucinations’, or that there is a benevolent God who occasionally gives good advice. More research is needed – do you think I could apply to a US university for funding?

Rosina

This earlier statement of The Bugmaster has been niggling at me “Firstly, this statement relies on an implicit assumption that a). the Christian God exists, and that b). he would only send voices that tell people to do good things, and would never send voices that tell people to do bad things. There are lots of deeply devoted, religious people who disagree with (a), such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans of all sorts, Hindus, etc. As I’ve shown before, these religions are vastly different from each other, and thus they all disagree about which god or gods actually exist. (b) is debatable, depending on religion. Certainly, a fundamentalist Muslim interprets the voices that tell him to kill people as being good, but I think most of us would disagree. Pagans aren’t really into taking their voices too seriously — they have too many gods for that. Buddhists don’t believe in any voices at all, as far as I can tell. Hare Krishnas believe that the entire Universe, including humans, is sort of a big voice, and it wouldn’t talk to itself. Deists believe that God doesn’t send any voices just on principle. Animists (and I think Shintoists as well) believe that when a god wants to talk to us, he incarnates physically, usually as an animal — none of this wussy inner voice stuff.” Couple this with his statement in the earlier post: “Ok, firstly, I argue that the vast majority of the voice-hearing people whom we have studied have suffered from schizophrenia (or some other similar disorder); this is how schizophrenia was discovered, so it seems like a good assumption. Keep in mind that I am talking about bona-fide aural manifestations here, not a vague feeling of goodness or whatever.” If ‘bona-fide aural manifestations’ cause voices which can be interpreted as the voice of God, then why don’t believers in all these other religions have just as many ‘aural manifestations’ as Christians? Are they immune to schizophrenia? Surely, other things being equal, members of all faiths and none would have roughly the same number of sufferers experiencing the same sorts of hallucinations? Rosina

ako

More research is needed – do you think I could apply to a US university for funding? Possibly. The idea would almost certainly need to be fine-tuned, and you might want to break it down into multiple smaller experiments, instead of your whole grid. It might work better to work out a couple of basic hypotheses you’re testing, and then run a couple different tests. For instance, you could do one experiment testing to see how the the voices/no voices split and the atheist/theist one come up, and then if you get interesting results, start digging into your goodness hypothesis. The first expiriment would be smaller, cheaper, and easier, and you’d have a better shot at applying for the bigger grants if you had some actual tangible data. And you’ve got a better shot at getting people who meet all the criteria for the first experiment by staying in one city and putting up notices, than finding a suitable selection of the noble, devout, eccentric, and murderous who fit the full range of beliefs and voice hearing tendencies. It would also be tricky getting a scientifically valid definition of good or evil acts. For instance, you cite suicide bombers as an example, but one of the reoccuring observations in politics is that the distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters depends largely on what side you’re on. There’s a lot of stuff that’s universally seen as evil when it’s done by the enemy to our side, but frequently accepted when it’s the other way. Still, I think you may have something worth looking into.

Rosina

Ako: “It would also be tricky getting a scientifically valid definition of good or evil acts. For instance, you cite suicide bombers as an example, but one of the reoccuring observations in politics is that the distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters depends largely on what side you’re on. There’s a lot of stuff that’s universally seen as evil when it’s done by the enemy to our side, but frequently accepted when it’s the other way.” Because this started out as a ‘religious’ question, I proposed defining as ‘religious but not excellent’ as those acts required or sanctified by the religion to which the actor belonged. I think I would say that a God without an existing religion is not much better than a Martian when it comes to First Contact, but for someone who belongs to an organized religion has a body of beliefs into which their proposed act fits. For the Aztecs, a voice telling you to take someone up to the top of the pyramid and tear their heart out would fit in nicely with their beliefs. A young mediaeval nobleman who feels called to fight the Infidel can look round and find his religious leaders handing out red crosses. Building a new place of worship is clearly meritorious, at least to adherents of that faith. So to define b) ‘religious but not excellent’ we look to the leaders, texts etc of the faith involved. If it’s supported, even if it’s only supported by a handful of radical preachers, then it’s b). If everyone says ‘That’s wrong – there’s no way the God we preach and that he claims to believe in would desire such behaviour, then it moves into d), ‘universally bad’. This division has the advantage of being ruled on from within the faith concerned, but there might be cases where the literalist reading – “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” – has long been dropped from the core beliefs, but could still be acted on at the behest of ‘voices’, or faith without voices. There is likely to be some leakage between groups b) and d), which as a researcher I would get to decide. But any results would be informative if they showed a difference between being a murderer for the sake of God and being a murderer because you enjoy it – or if any significant change only affected those being excellent or neutral, while excluding the violence of fanatics. If anyone wishes to take up this suggestion for a research project, please contact me. I would accept a small fee as advisor, but I feel that my academic credentials (BA (Open University), mainly on Classical History) would not be a strong selling point for a grant.

wintermute

> If ‘bona-fide aural manifestations’ cause voices which can be interpreted as the voice of God, then why don’t believers in all these other religions have just as many ‘aural manifestations’ as Christians? Are they immune to schizophrenia? I’m sure they do hear just as many voices; I expect that Bugmaster meant that they’re less likely to attribute those voices to God.

none

WHY DID SHE KILL PEOPLE AND WHY DID SHE DIE

none

WHY DID SHE KILL PEOPLE AND WHY DID SHE DIE

none

WHY DID SHE KILL PEOPLE AND WHY DID SHE DIE

wintermute

opoponax: i would add that you don’t see a whole lot of Methodists (7%) running around complaining about what an invisible minority they are and doing silly stunts to gain more visibility. I like to think that CNN are about as close to an unbiased news source as exists in America. So when they broadcast a show saying that Methodists have no basis for morality, that this is a Baptist nation and that Methodists should just shut up and accept it, and if they really have to be Methodists, then “they need to shut up about it” — then there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Austin Cline is one of the more incisive regular writers on Methodism. This week he discusses a Paula Zahn show on CNN that begins with a brief vignette about couple in a small town in Mississippi who complained to their son’s public elementary school principal about time spent in bible study and prayer. Yes, his public elementary school. For their trouble they became outcasts. No one would speak to them or let their children play with their children. When it was later revealed they were Methodists, the father’s boss got calls complaining he had brought a Methodist to town. People drove parked in front of their house and stared at them as if they were animals in a zoo. They left town. Oh, wait. We don’t actually see programs like that about Methodism, do we?

Michelle Strickland

In a way I think it exist und in an other way I dont think so. I´ve read alot of books and stories about the 5 ghosts. And, I dont know if exsist